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Lots of people have been calling us having received a letter from the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles saying that they have 60 days to get the interlock or they cannot drive. The letters went out to people who completed their driving prohibitions after November 30, 2011. We wrote about this first on September 26 when the calls started coming in.
The letters are with respect to a class of people we had not encountered. Some people who received a 90-day IRP in the months or weeks immediately before November 30, 2011, and who served the entire prohibition were not required to...

An interesting twist to the Sivia decision is that BC municipalities may be able to decriminalize marijuana relying on this precedent.
UPDATE: The BC Court of Appeal has confirmed the approach taken by the Court in Sivia. Is this the back-door to marihuana decriminalization?
In Sivia one of the major issues was whether the BC Government could pass legislation which would have the effect of stopping the police from conducting criminal investigations of drinking-driving offences. The Court said the province had the power to do this.
An Immediate Roadside Prohibition in BC begins with a criminal investigation for drinking and driving. Criminal law...

We have had a few calls today from people who did not instruct us to file an amended Petition and set a hearing date. Some have already received a letter from the OSMV saying they must get the interlock and pay for the RDP. We haven't seen the letter yet. We have been told that they have 30 days or 60 days to get the interlock installed.
We know some lawyers were of the opinion that the Government wouldn't get their act together and follow through. We thought that this was possible, which was why we listed an option 2 and...

We would like to express our thanks to all of the clients who contacted us last week concerning their Petition for judicial review of the IRP they received. It was an extremely busy week for us, but we got the job done.
We appreciate the patience exercised by everyone who called. We also appreciate the interesting ideas many people have about the judicial challenges to the IRP scheme itself. Many people have a lot of thoughtful ideas.
Most people opted to keep up the litigation. This applied to the clients who fell in the categories wherein the Government wanted to pull their...

As we explained in our post on July 23, 2012, the Government wants everyone who received an IRP and had the consequences suspended to now serve the punishment. This means that if you managed to suspend the remedial consequences, (i.e. the interlock and responsible drivers program, fines, etc.) by having us file a Petition for a judicial review of your IRP, they now want to force you to do these things if you want to drive.
We did a smart thing in hindsight. For each client we reviewed the case and wherever possible we included arguments on the merits of the...

In you were issued an Immediate Roadside Prohibition in Port Moody from June 15 until today, you should give us a call.
As CTV has reported, we obtained records through a Freedom of Information request from the Port Moody Police. The records show that the Port Moody Police have been providing false information to the Office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles concerning the maintenance of their Approved Screening Devices.
Each month the officer who completed the Certificate of Qualified ASD Calibrator would simply record the annual service expiry date for each device as one month in the future. Obviously, because it...

We regularly see standard police interrogation procedure that in our opinion would shock the good thinking people of Canada if they only knew about it. An Alberta court decision which provides a good example of standard police interrogation procedure has just made the news and it's worth a read. See: R. v. Chapple, 2012 ABPC 229
The decision is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is as a cautionary example of how the police can obtain a false confession.
Cops and Government dislike lawyers because lawyers help people
In our day to day practice it is clear to us...

We were curious about the 90-day IRP win rate so we made a request for the statistics pursuant to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Months later, well after the information could be used by the Court, they sent us the stats. The fact that they held onto it so the Court wouldn't have a chance to look at it is disturbing. What is also disturbing is what the numbers reveal as we go through them.
As most readers of our blog know, 90-day Immediate Roadside Prohibitions, also known as IRPs or Automatic Roadside Prohibitions or ARPs, are...

If you are thinking about whether you should be disputing a Warn IRP, or whether you made a mistake by not disputing a Warn IRP, we have some stats for you to consider.
Back in January of this year we made a Freedom of Information request for stats that the OSMV had collected concerning the Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP) scheme. We knew that they had this information right in front of them in some computer program, but because we did not identify the specific documents, they decided to not respond to us in the usual course. You can understand why we...

As the summer wraps up and your children return from camp, this is a good time to let you know that next summer, when your child is 18, you won't have to pay to send them anywhere. This is because the Harper Government is going to send your kids to jail. Here's how it works:
On November 8, 2012, the Harper Government's new minimum sentencing provisions for drug offences come into force. So if a person is caught and convicted of a drug offence from that date onward, they will face minimum punishment under the new law. What is the punishment?
If...

Acumen Law Corporation is a Vancouver Criminal Law Firm with its head office in downtown Vancouver, as well as law offices beside the courthouse in Richmond, in downtown Victoria and just off the Fraser Highway in Surrey, British Columbia.

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Sometimes you may find yourself in difficult situations and not be able to defuse the situation without going to court.